Talk:Black-crowned night heron

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They have long necks but keep it coiled up. They make a "Kwok!" and if you hide and call out "Kwok!" like a bird, it may "Kwok!" back at you. If one sees a Human it may fly off. SD

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 20:41, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Picture of stuffed bird is terrible

The picture of the stuffed heron is not representative of what they look like the the wild - when standing the neck is shorter and the bird is more vertical than horizontal. The stuffed bird looks like a duck with heron coloring! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.132.203.192 (talk) 00:53, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Birds have a lot of postures, it's not that bad! But we have lots of better ones of live birds (see the Wikimedia Commons link), so I've replaced it, and you can change this too. —innotata 02:00, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Great Blue Heron which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:00, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Great blue heron which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 21:00, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

File:Bihoreau Gris.jpg to appear as POTD

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Bihoreau Gris.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on June 25, 2015. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2015-06-25. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Picture of the day

A black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) feeding on a fish in the shallows of the Chêne River in Montreal, Quebec. These widespread ambush predators average 64 cm (25 in) in length.Photograph: Alain Carpentier

Capitalization

I have not looked into the spelling convention, or past consensus, but Black-crowned night heron is a specific type of heron and thus a proper noun, necessitating capitalization of the first word. Otr500 (talk) 15:51, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Range

"a medium-sized heron found throughout a large part of the world, except in the coldest regions and Australasia"

This seems a somewhat bold statement if you compare the map. The bird is found only in very few places in Europe, it is not found in large parts of Asia, it is not found in half of Africa. Would you consider all these regions "the coldest regions"? --87.150.9.21 (talk) 12:33, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree and I have changed it accordingly. Aythya affinis (talk) 15:58, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

heron

bawal ba ito hulihin 130.105.183.225 (talk) 18:16, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Lead Photo

@MPF has changed the lead photo to one that is I think pretty clearly worse (even if you disagree in this example, for the sake of the broader argument here let's assume that it is worse), with the reason that the photo should be of the nominate subspecies. I thought this was not a good justification, and that it would just bias us towards generally using European subspecies for photos, and changed it back. They then changed it again, citing "having nominate in taxobox is useful, it future-proofs the taxobox against taxonomic changes".

I don't think this reasoning makes any sense. The nominate subspecies is not in any way more representative of the species than any other subspecies. I would agree that in general lead photos should be of a subspecies that is visually representative of the species and probably one that is relatively widespread/abundant, but neither of those considerations are relevant here. And I don't think it future-proofs anything. This page is about the whole species as currently defined. If this species was split, the current title would likely be a disambiguation page, and the content would have to be split between both/all new species. As a clear example in the opposite direction, if Jamaican red-tailed hawk (the nominate ssp) was split from red-tailed hawk, the red-tailed hawk page would clearly become the page for the species receiving whatever other name has priority, NOT the page for Buteo jamaicensis.

I think following the guideline @MPF suggests would have no real benefit, and would generally cause a bias towards European taxa over those from elsewhere in the world, and a bias towards temperate taxa over tropical ones in the Americas. And it certainly shouldn't be used to replace photos with ones that are worse. Thoughts? Somatochlora (talk) 15:44, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the reasoning does make good practical sense. I've long since lost count of the number edits I've made (both here and at wikispecies) of taxa which have been affected by species-level splits, where the taxobox photo showed the wrong species, because nobody else could be bothered to check whether the lead pic was still applicable or not, post-split. A page which has a pretty pic, is worthless if that pic ends up showing the wrong species.

I'd also contest your last point: there are few taxa (and an ever-decreasing number, as oceans are increasingly being found to be significant barriers promoting speciation) that lead to your claimed biases. Of those that it does still apply to, quite a lot have New World taxa as the nominate subspecies, as New World biota were already well-known by the time of Linnaean classification, often better-known than the far north of Eurasia (e.g. Eremophila alpestris, Loxia leucoptera); and within the New World, there is if anything a bias towards the tropics (Buteo jamaicensis for starters; and a significant proportion of early descriptions of New World taxa were from the Guyanas or the far northeast of Brazil).

Within herons, this species here has an Old World nominate, but another pantropical heron (Butorides striata) was first described from South America (and you can see from that page's history, I added a nominate to the taxobox there too). In both cases, the potential for future trans-ocean splits is clear; neither genus has had full cross-range genetic analysis yet, and both these two species have good potential to prove paraphyletic with respect to other species in their genera. - MPF (talk) 17:54, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Another case in point on the claimed Americas temperate bias: the Amercan subspecies in question here (Nycticorax nycticorax hoactli) was described from "Nova Hispania", = Mexico; it is presumably the native Nahuatl name for the bird - MPF (talk) 18:20, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

One final point: to "The nominate subspecies is not in any way more representative of the species than any other subspecies" – yes, it is; it is the taxon on which the name is based, so is the most representative, by definition. - MPF (talk) 20:35, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

@MPF do you think the first photo for red-tailed hawk should be changed to the nominate subspecies?

We can't, because there aren't any cc-licensed photos of it available anywhere, I have already looked some time ago 😆 If there was, then possibly, as long as a photo is at least tolerably good: if the only one available had been a distant blurry shot, no I wouldn't, I'm not that pedantic about it. More definitely I would at wikispecies. - MPF (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

I'll agree that there may be value in using a photo that is likely to remain appropriate regardless of taxonomic changes. I don't think this should outway aesthetics or educational value, but it's a reasonable argument. But it simply doesn't apply in this case - we would be creating articles about, say, "American night-heron" and "Eurasian night-heron" (I know that's a bad name but for the sake of argument), and I don't see any reason why a photo of the nominate subspecies accidentally ending up on the American species is more likely than the reverse. And it certainly doesn't apply to something like crane (bird) where you've used the same justification (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crane_(bird)&oldid=1230481765), nor to other cases where the nominate subspecies would just be removed from the original article in the case of a split (i.e. red-tailed hawk).

Actually, it very likely would apply in this instance: since Eurasia doesn't have any "Other-crowned Hight Heron(s)", there is, as already noted in the first paragraph, no tradition for using the qualifier 'Black-crowned' in the region. So a future split of N. hoactli from N. nycticorax would leave N. hoactli as 'Black-crowned Night Heron', and N. nycticorax as 'Eurasian Night Heron' or similar. Directly comparable cases include the past splits of Black Scoter Melanitta [nigra] americana from Common Scoter Melanitta nigra, and of Black-billed Magpie Pica [pica] hudsonia from Eurasian Magpie Pica pica: in both instances the vernacular name of the New World [sub]species was already in widespread use in the Americas, but not in Europe, for the species sensu lato, and name changes of the form as you suggest were not done. Since the wikipedia page is connected to the scientific-name-based wikidata item, it is the nominate subspecies that retains the wikipedia page, not the split-off subspecies, even if the en:wp page name is currently at the name of a non-nominate subspecies. - MPF (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

"it is the taxon on which the name is based, so is the most representative" Your sentence can be reworded as "It is the first subspecies that was described, so it is the most representative". This is silly - an accident of history has no bearing on which sub-taxon is most representative of a larger taxon.Somatochlora (talk) 21:35, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

It may appear silly when put like that, but the whole of scientific biological nomenclature is based on it: it can't be dismissed, however much one might like to! - MPF (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

The rules of biological nomenclature determine what label we use for a particular taxon, and what labels would be used in the case of split/lumps etc. It has absolutely no bearing on a question like "what photo is the best one to use for representing a specific taxon", and I believe the idea that the nominate subspecies has any special significance whatsoever is mistaking the map for the territory. All that said, I'm clearly not going to convince that your changes along these lines aren't valuable, your reasons are valid if IMO insufficient, and it's pretty low-stakes. I guess I just hope you'll consider in any particular case whether the benefits really outweigh the costs of using a lower-quality photo. In any case thanks for hearing me out!Somatochlora (talk) 18:42, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

@Somatochlora thanks! Any thoughts about using the pic below? It is better than the one I added to the taxobox before, which is perhaps a little over-exposed on the throat - MPF (talk) 10:34, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Yeah that's definitely a bit better, but I found one from Israel that I think is better than any discussed (although missing the breeding plumes) and put it in the article. Somatochlora (talk) 16:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Yep, that one is fine with me 👍 - MPF (talk) 21:55, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

@Somatochlora: I've found what I think is a rather better photo of the nominate on Flickr and uploaded it; how would you feel about this one in the taxobox? It's actually better resolution than the one you'd added. - MPF (talk) 00:29, 14 December 2024 (UTC)